But will it have the late night talk show wraparound/flashback structure that Psycho IV had? (I wonder if Psycho IV was taking some cues from that Midnight Caller TV show? I suppose we could have a CCH Pounder vs Gary Cole face off over who is the most believable late night talk radio host! Though Eric Bogosian would probably win with a last minute ranting monologue!)

It's an interesting idea conceptually (particularly since the film deals so directly with ideas of multiple personalities), but I think the execution is a little on the dull side (at least until the shower scene).

It works better in the slow moments but I liked in the shower scene that you kind of get ghostly, double vision afterimages that only adds to the impression of violence.

It also hadn't really dawned on me until that video that Van Sant does a rotating spiral out of the eye rather than a slow zoom out that hangs on the final stare longer: inspired homage to Vertigo or a wish to keep the pace of the scene visually interesting on the assumption that modern audiences might get bored?

There's a more detailed account in this earlier article (though its introduction is misleading).

The cuts in the domestic US version, to which Hitchcock was persuaded to agree, are mentioned in Universal's very long making-of documentary, and a clip is even included. I doubt the extra footage is exclusive to the German version - it's just that the framegrabs from the German TV copy highlighted the issue. I'm sure I've seen at least some of the cut material either in 16mm UK prints or BBC broadcasts in the 1970s & 80s (as with the German TV version, these were open-matte transfers so from different masters than the widescreen ones used now).

Of all the films that might benefit from a Director's Cut edition this is surely one of the most important, but I'm surprised there's relatively little interest. I raised the issue with a US Hitchcock fan and he replied: "As long as it's the domestic release version I saw in 1960, I really don't care."

Since it's pretty clear that the shots were trimmed or deleted for censorship reasons, I'd say it would be safe to assume Hitchcock would have preferred to retain the footage in the general release version even if he agreed to the re-editing. The loss of the "undressing" and "bloody hands" shots create only a mild discontinuity, but the abrupt fade-out on the low-angle knifing of Arbogast really undercuts (pun literally intended) the horror of that scene.

It's interesting, how Jonathan says, how little apparent interest there is in getting a Director's Cut of the film. Even though I've watched all the Psycho extras, I completely forgot about all this until I stumbled upon the German version on another site today.

There's a more detailed account in this earlier article (though its introduction is misleading).

The cuts in the domestic US version, to which Hitchcock was persuaded to agree, are mentioned in Universal's very long making-of documentary, and a clip is even included. I doubt the extra footage is exclusive to the German version - it's just that the framegrabs from the German TV copy highlighted the issue. I'm sure I've seen at least some of the cut material either in 16mm UK prints or BBC broadcasts in the 1970s & 80s (as with the German TV version, these were open-matte transfers so from different masters than the widescreen ones used now).

Of all the films that might benefit from a Director's Cut edition this is surely one of the most important, but I'm surprised there's relatively little interest. I raised the issue with a US Hitchcock fan and he replied: "As long as it's the domestic release version I saw in 1960, I really don't care."

Apparently the BBC2 showing on 5 October 1984 was the last time the uncut version was shown in the UK. That was actually the first time Psycho.

EDIT: And here's the second half dealing with Psycho III, Psycho IV: The Beginning and briefly the remake and TV series.

I especially like the moment in the video where they describe Psycho II as "believing in rehabilitation, whilst Psycho III does not". Approaching Psycho III from that perspective, as well as having moments of seeming homage to giallo and Blood Simple (making Anthony Perkins quite well versed in thriller tropes!), makes it seem a lot more interesting!

Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Oct 12, 2018 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Has anyone seen 78/52? The Blu-ray.com review makes it seem interesting, and the disc kind of sounds like what I was previously proposing labels do where they don't bother to license a movie at all and just release a disc of supplemental extras. I was also surprised to learn from the review that apparently Guillermo Del Toro wrote a 500+ page Spanish-language book on Hitchcock!

Its OK. It veers from academic analyzation of the filmic ti a talking head of some bad horror movie talking why he likes it.
Probably my favorite part gets five seconds, showing how that scene influenced Scorsese's Raging Bull's Sugar Ray fight akmost verbatim.
I'd say its worth a watch but nothing wirth getting excited about

Interesting to see how deep Psycho had buried itself into pop-culture by that point, thirty years since it's release. Surely by now (2018) it must take the title for the most parodied/spoofed/homaged/referenced film in cinema history*? The shower-scene alone (the subject of the aforementioned 78/52 doc) inspired so many comedy piss-takes - in sit-coms, advertising, cartoons, etc. - that you could create an interesting collage-type film (similar to that art-installation film The Clock) just depicting all the references!

*I can't think of another title that can really challenge it, except maybe The Wizard of Oz?

The shower scene is surely up there with the plot convention of It's a Wonderful Life in terms of being utilized or parodied in other mediums, but there's prob no way to know for sure what reference is most pervasive

The shower scene is surely up there with the plot convention of It's a Wonderful Life in terms of being utilized or parodied in other mediums, but there's prob no way to know for sure what reference is most pervasive

If any Kurosawa film had a wide-ranging impact, it was Rashomon, not Yojimbo-- I'll see your Pokemon and raise you a Garfield and Friends parody! But none of these are in the realm of an American movie that aired on TV for decades in terms of reference potential